1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing technologies. In particular, the invention relates to a method of processing information in which a plurality of pieces of input data are processed individually and output in parallel, a method of displaying moving image thumbnails, and a decoding apparatus and an information processing apparatus to which the methods are applied.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the remarkable progress of information processing technologies in recent years, information processing apparatuses that perform high-speed operations have become readily available. Likewise, technologies for processing various types of data, including images and sound, has been developed. As a result, it has been possible for users to easily acquire various types of data for reproduction and processing as desired.
Given these circumstances, technologies for processing a plurality of pieces of data of a sort in parallel and outputting the same in parallel have come into common use for the purpose of grasping the contents of vast amounts of data, comparing the results of processing, and the like. The wide spectrum of applications of such technologies includes, for example, displaying thumbnails of compression-coded moving image files in a moving image reproducing apparatus, and comparing images for the sake of image analysis on a plurality of pieces of data, such as images, sound, or temperatures, all pieces of data being acquired from multiple channels in real time.
In order for such data processing systems to achieve parallel processing, it is necessary to create threads in accordance with the number of pieces of data to process, and divide limited resources such as CPUs and memories temporally and spatially to allocate them to the individual threads. Consequently, a greater number of threads can increase the system load when an attempt is made to increase the number of thumbnails able to be displayed at a time or when an attempt is made to increase the number of input channels allowing for the comparison of more results. It has thus been difficult to increase the number of pieces of data to be output in parallel if predetermined output rates must be ensured when performing a high level of real-time processing in parallel, such as when displaying moving image thumbnails by simply reproducing a plurality of moving images as thumbnails, and when comparing time variations of a plurality of channels of data.